Step 1: Cleaning up

Thank you very much for your help and for your thoughts at this very moment. In a situation like this, it is so encouraging to hear from friends all over the world.

Sorry for reporting so late, but we are very busy saving our stuff from the ship into a container. The ship does not leak so much anymore after diver “Erlundur Gudmundsson” put butter into the cracks. Thanks to the low temperatures, the butter freezes and we get some sleep and we do not have to pump anymore so often. It is getting dark and cold up here, but our spirits are still high.

First, we cleaned the floating pier from our broken mooring lines:

We hit the floating dock so heavily that it was like a terrible earthquake. Noe told me that he was hiding under the table in the ship when everything was flying around and the wood was bursting! He told me, he learned that in an emergency drill in Alaska.

The worst was the 20-meter high mast, which was like a destructive whip with every hit. Even the navigation light, which had survived all storms for 17 years, was no match for these mighty forces.

The chaos on the boat is frustrating, especially to find always new destructions:

The temperature is dropping every day with the shorter days. Another snowstorm, but that does not stop our kids from working long hours to save our belongings. Mirjam and Sigi were tireless angels and Sabine had to breastfeed “Vital” from time to time. Dario often works until the early morning to answer the most important emails.

On her second birthday on November 16, Mia found a new intact bed on the ship for herself.

Thanks to Vignir Sigurvinsson, deputy manager of “Elding Whale Watching”, we have a place to stay for the moment. Here we can wash, dry and sort all our things. In the evening we cook for our helpers and sleep between our clothes bags in a warm room together.

IMPORTANT NOTE: We are urgently looking for a new place to stay, as the house has already been re-let some time ago.

Tomorrow we hope to have everything in the container. Then we want to get the “Pachamama” tight and protect her against the cold and possible storms.

We struggled the last 10 days because here in Akureyri there is only one shipyard “Slippurinn” that can carry out the repair and they told us that they like to help but are too busy. Finally, they have confirmed to start on February 10th. Until then we will remove the wood in the boat to gain access to the aluminum frames. If we get the funds together, we use the time also to order material and to replace damaged equipment.

We also talked to our insurance company. They sent a ship surveyor on board, who confirmed that the boat is not navigable and require major repairs. It looks like that the insurance covers part of the repairs, but we are very grateful for any donation to cover the additional uninsured costs of our disaster.